


To Feel Your Bare Feet

by oceaxe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon verse, First Time, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23553532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/pseuds/oceaxe
Summary: And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. - Khalil GibranOn the occasion of FiaMac's birthday, who prompted "barefoot Dean, and bonus points if Cas feels compelled to touch."Many thanks to swtalmnd for the quick beta!
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45





	To Feel Your Bare Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FiaMac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiaMac/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY FIAMAC
> 
> I am so sorry that these two gigantic saps refused to do anything E rated. This one got all poetic on me and I don't know what to say.

It’s a quiet evening. The air is cool on Dean’s face as he navigates Baby back to the bunker, window down and Cas at his side. To his unspoken dismay - and it’s been a real struggle not to speak out but if there’s anything that defines Dean Winchster, it’s restraint - Cas is still wearing his entire “salaryman-down-on-his-luck” ensemble, wrinkled tan coat and all. In this heat. 

He has loosened his tie, though, and his hair ruffles in the breeze as Baby hits 80 on the open road. But still, it’d been an unseasonably hot day for early April and the sun has only just begun to bury its head in the side of the world. It’s gross and muggy in the car and Dean would shrug off his flannel if not for -- not for what? He’s not alone. 

He could ask Cas to take the wheel. 

“Cas, take the wheel,” he orders, and sure, yeah, that wasn’t asking but Cas does it all the same. 

Dean wrestles the slightly damp fabric off his shoulders and almost hits Cas in the face with his elbow as he strips it from his arms. But at long last it’s ditched in the back seat and he can feel the wind on his arms, the back of his neck.  
  
“Thanks,” he says out of the side of his mouth to Cas, then glances over and catches him looking. Dean swallows. He drives on.

The sky goes a shade darker and Dean feels like he’s about to miss something important. The sunset is so nice, surely they could just like… stop. Stop somewhere. Enjoy it. Before it’s over. Before it’s completely dark. They don’t even have to do anything, just sit and, like. Look. They could look at the sky and just breathe. 

It would be nice.

Now, Dean’s no poet but he’s pretty sure there are better ways to describe this evening than ‘nice.’ He lets himself think about adjectives and synonyms for a minute and then swerves to the shoulder as the word “enchanting” arises from the swirl of words in his brain. 

Baby rolls to a smooth stop, maybe kicking up a few grains of dust but then she always does like to make an entrance, even in Bumfuck, Nowhere. 

“Dean?” Cas looks at him, seeming startled out of some kind of daydream. “Why did we stop? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, can’t we just stop? For a minute?” Dean doesn’t know why he sounds like he’s fighting. “I was hot, let’s just get out. Stretch our legs.” There’s a pause where Dean can actually feel Cas’ confusion settle on him. He shakes it off. “It’s a nice night.”  
  
And with that he swings the door open, a long metallic creak, and hears its echo on the other side as Cas levers himself out. The night is definitely more than nice. It’s downright fucking _enchanting_. 

There are little streamers of pink clouds lit from underneath, glowing like molten copper, and above them the blue of the sky almost matches the blue of Cas’- Dean pulls his mental monologue up by the short hairs as he walks past the edge of the shoulder, shaking his head and striking out into fallow pasture. The blue of-- not Cas’ -- goddamn it. 

Blue as a sedan. Sedan blue, the sky is. Like a four-door family car. 

_Or like those flowers over there_ , his brain smugly suggests. 

They are, actually, a near exact match. There are groupings of them here and there, tiny blossoms just beginning to close up and wait for the sun to return. He pulls his gaze away, focuses instead on the sound of Cas tromping behind him, frustration evident in the gait of his step. 

“Dean, I think we ought to get back, Sam said he’d probably found another case and--”  
  
Dean turns around, pasting a smile on his face that turns genuine when he sees the gentle frown on Cas’ mouth, the tilt of his eyes. Cas is such a sad bastard. Dean ought to cheer him up. 

“Look!” he says, throwing his hands up in the air turning around, gesturing to the sunset and the soft, long grass. “It’s gorgeous out. Just feels good to get some air. There’s no rush to get back. We’ve got time.” His hands drop to his sides as Cas just looks around, blinking. 

“It is… nice,” he finally concedes. “Are we going to sit?” 

Dean takes a deep breath of cooling air and notices that there’s literally nothing else around for as far as the eye can see, save one speed limit sign (60) and what might be a falling-down barn. 

“Yeah,” he says as though that was the plan. There’s no plan. He sits, then hops back up as the ground is a lot less soft than it looks. Pricklers. Goddamn weeds. 

Cas is shucking his coat and laying it on the ground before Dean can even think to ask, which he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t ask Cas to take anything off. The idea is unthinkable, enormous. As far he’s aware, Cas’ clothes are a part of him; underneath the coat is probably another coat. He looks. 

Nope, under the coat is a dark blue jacket, and under that is a white shirt, and under that is, one would have to assume, a body. 

Probably. 

Dean realizes his inner attitude is getting a bit princessy and tries to toughen up a little. “Thanks,” he says, more gruff than he meant to be. Cas just raises an eyebrow and watches while Dean sits down gingerly, like the coat’s gonna bite him in the ass. Cas keeps staring until Dean realizes he wants to sit down too, and he scootches over, suddenly embarrassed by his own behavior. 

It’s just Cas. Cas is kind. Cas is giving. Cas is just… like that, and Dean’s a jerk for being so weird about all this. It isn’t Cas’s fault that Dean… nope. Nope. 

For lack of anything else to distract him from the fact that Cas is now much closer than he’s ever been in Baby, even when riding shotgun, Dean starts fiddling with his shoelaces. 

He finds himself untying them and soon he’s jerked them off his sweaty feet and before he knows it, he’s sitting there with his legs stretched out before him, thankfully wearing black socks so there’s no obvious sweat stains but they gotta be stinky nonetheless. His feet were hot, he notices now. Like, really uncomfortable. This is much better. He sighs and tilts his head up. The sky is so blue now, getting darker but still blue like those flowers. 

Cas clears his throat, then shifts around until he’s sitting cross legged. 

Cross legged! Criss-cross applesauce!! Cas!!!

Dean tries not to let his eyes bug out of his head while he’s giving Cas the side-eye; it seems likely to cause the eye-equivalent of a brain aneurysm. He soon abandons the effort, though, because now Cas is taking off his own shoes. 

Feet. 

Cas has them.

Well, of course he does. Dean castigates himself for even being surprised but c’mon man, Cas has been in different outfits once or twice, like Crazy Cas in his mental institution get-up and Emmanuel Cas in those lame dad duds, but like… he’s never seen any part of him naked. (Excepting the scene with the Reaper but Dean’s pretty sure he’s blocked that out of his mind completely. With the help of Mr. Jack Daniels and an online hypnotist named Wendolyn.) 

The socks, as anyone could have predicted, are gold-toed polyester and Cas’ feet, as no one could have predicted, are just feet. Standard issue, five toes to judge by the five bumps filling out the aforementioned gold toes. 

Dean quickly averts his eyes as Cas moves to take off… Take off! He takes off the socks. 

It’s not the feet so much as the… As the… well, they’re just. 

They’re not ugly. 

“Dean?” Dean whips his head up, finds himself deep in blue. Goddamn, are they blue. It’s not even poetic, they just are. 

“You look upset,” Cas starts, uncertain. 

“Naw, man,” Dean chuckles. “Just didn’t know you had wings _and_ feet. Seems like overkill.” 

“I have always had feet. And I no longer have wings,” Cas says, looking at his own toes. So Dean looks at them too.

“Yeah, I know. I was just kidding.” There’s a long silence. Dean watches as Cas wiggles his toes a little against the long green and gold blades of grass. They’re kind of cute. They look vulnerable; the toes, the arch of the foot, the ankle. Against the sharp, dark line of the suit, it's a jarring contrast. 

“Aren’t you going to-” Cas asks, making a slight motion with his head towards where Dean’s socked toes hang over the edge of the ersatz blanket, inert. 

“Yeah,” he says, pitching up and forward, surprising himself. He doesn’t usually take his socks off in front of people he’s not about to bang. He’s pretty sure Sam hasn’t seen his feet since they were kids. It’s not a _thing_ , it’s just… he doesn’t know what it is. 

He peels his right sock off, wincing as he sees the callous from his old hunting boots, the rough skin and the nails that could use a trim, to be completely honest. He wants to defend himself, he wants to defend his feet. He wants to stand (fully shod, of course) and defend his poor, misunderstood, hardscrabble, rough-and-tumble feet before the Foot Aesthetics Tribunal.

Maybe it’s a thing. 

He pulls the other sock off, anyway. 

Because it’s just Cas. Cas doesn’t know what feet are supposed to look like. And if he does, he doesn’t care, Dean realizes. 

But then he glances over to see Cas looking at his feet and oh, son of a bitch. 

“Feels good,” is all he says. He looks down again, at his feet and at Dean’s feet, which are side by side.

Their feet are bare, side by side in the tall grass, in the light of a rising moon. Dean hasn’t felt this free in years. 

He lets his legs relax, the muscles of his thighs soften and his ankles rotate outwards. His toes, his pinky toe, nearly brushes Cas’. The stars are coming out and twinkling in the deep blue of heaven. 

It’s an enchanting evening, he thinks. He feels enchanted. 

“This is nice,” he says. Cas smiles and shifts his foot over a fraction until it’s touching Dean’s from toe to ankle. Warm and smooth against the cool, rough grass that tickles their soles. 

They really don’t have to hurry back. 

Cas flexes his toes and the movement is close enough to the sole of Dean’s right foot to cause a response. He flinches and giggles, and then flinches again, pulling his feet up.

Cas looks over with eyebrows raised and the barest hint of a smile gracing his lips. “Are you ticklish?”

Dean shakes his head violently. “Nope, just thought a bug was on me.” He brushes his feet off, looking off to the horizon. 

“You’re lying.” Cas scoots closer, faster than Dean’s prepared for. He reaches for Dean’s foot where it’s tucked close to his body, pulling on the ankle to straighten his leg. Dean’s laughing almost before Cas’ fingers get anywhere near his foot, butterflies in his stomach. He can’t help it, though; he fights back. 

“Fuck off,” he gasps, trying to wriggle out of Cas’ iron hold but of course he can’t. As always, Cas’ strength makes him feel things he wouldn’t ever want to talk about out loud. Cas holds tight and their eyes meet as Cas brings his fingers close to the sole of Dean’s naked foot, slowly. He can’t stand the anticipation, it’s causing real issues in the vicinity of his, you know, area. So he relaxes his leg to get Cas off-guard and as soon as the fingertips make contact, he jerks his knee back hard to get his foot away.

But it doesn’t work, because Cas really is that strong and Cas’ grip didn’t break and Cas just ends up on top of him. Which, well. 

Cas catches himself with one hand to the ground beside Dean’s head, and Dean’s knee falls to the side, letting the bulk of Cas’ considerable weight settle on his stomach. The grip around his ankle loosens and Dean breathes out a sigh which quickly turns to a yelp as fingers nevertheless find his arch and feather along it. He jerks upwards only to feel the irresistible mass of his friend pinning him down.

Cas grins and does it again, and Dean can’t catch his breath, he’s laughing so hard he’s almost crying and he’s hard and he can’t hide it and he can’t deny it, and he’s still laughing because Cas is still dragging his fingers back and forth along the bottom of his foot but it feels like he’s skimming the surface of a vast reservoir of pent-up feeling, too much, too soon, too fucking much. 

“Stop!” he manages to say, and Cas stops immediately. His smile drops away, head tilting, gaze concerned. Dean lets his head roll to the side as he catches his breath, determined not to think too clearly about their position. Cas, however, suddenly seems to notice that they’re not exactly in familiar territory and climbs off Dean, settling back into his cross-legged pose that reminds Dean way too much of that other Cas, the pothead. 

He curls up into a sitting position, running one hand through his hair in lieu of adjusting himself in his jeans. “So,” he begins, but pauses and can’t think of anything else to say.

“Sorry,” Cas says after a beat. Which is just ridiculous. 

“What for? You stopped as soon as I asked,” Dean says, picking at a blade of grass and wondering why he isn’t aching to run away from this suddenly very weird situation. 

“I shouldn’t have tickled you.”  
  
“Why not?” Dean is shocked to hear himself say. “I, uh, I was enjoying it.” 

“You were?” 

“Yeah, couldn’t you tell? I was laughing.” He does not and will not mention the other thing. If Cas noticed, let him bring it up. 

“That does not always signal enjoyment, where tickling is concerned. I know that, I should have-”  
  
“Cas, it’s okay. I liked it.”  
  
Cas stops talking but is still frowning. “I ruined our night. It was nice and I ruined it.” He looks down into his lap where his feet cross over each other. 

For a brief moment, Dean tries to think of something to say to talk Cas off his ledge of failure. But words aren’t really Dean’s forte; he’s a man of action. So his hand darts out to grab ahold of Cas’ top ankle, immobilizing his foot so his fingers can dig into the soft area just under the arch. 

Cas jolts out of his slump, his large hand wrapping around Dean’s wrist but not jerking it away. He doesn’t laugh, but he looks intrigued. Dean, however, is not intrigued. He’s petulant. 

“You’re not even ticklish? At all? Man, what’s the point? I thought I was gonna get divine retribution.”  
  
“Divine creatures are not known for their susceptibility to tickling,” Cas intones somberly, but his eyes dance with something close to mischief. Dean tries again, flexing his fingers with no result. 

He can’t believe how disappointed he is. 

“Don’t give up, Dean. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s not immune to the tickle reflex.” 

Dean can feel the blood rush to his face but it’s dark, too dark for a blush to give him away. Besides, it doesn’t sound like Cas would mind even if he figured it out. Because that right there, _“maybe there’s a part of me,”_ that was flirting. No two ways about it.

“You might want to try the--” Cas breaks off before he can make his suggestion because Dean’s got his fingers high up on Cas’ chest, pressing under his arms and seeking the tenderest spot. Cas smiles but doesn’t flinch, nor does he laugh. 

“Hm,” Dean says, heart racing. Cas’ smile grows as Dean’s gaze rove over him, ostensibly seeking another place to tickle but really assessing the situation. Yes, there is a bulge where he’d hoped to find one. Okay then, that’s what we’re working with. That’s where this might go. Good to know. 

The night sky blazes with twinkling lights and they seem to have gotten inside Dean somehow, he feels like he’s fizzing with light. 

“The neck is said to be one of the more common areas,” Cas trails off as Dean’s fingers graze his neck, lightly brushing the soft hairs at the nape. No laughter, just quickened breath.

“I could count your ribs,” Dean says, and when did he get that close? His words are delivered to Cas’ earlobe, another possible target. His hands drift down again as he shifts his legs, positioning himself before Cas on his knees. But he doesn’t try to count any ribs, he just kind of clutches and releases, feeling the strength of the muscles there. Firm but pliable, and so warm. 

Can lips be ticklish, Dean wonders.

He looks up to find Cas’ eyes locked on his, his lips parted. Dean can feel how much faster Cas’ breath is coming, under his hands his ribs expand and contract and expand. “I’m just gonna,” Dean starts, whispering so he doesn’t wake Cas from the trance he seems to be in, but he finishes without words. His lips skate over Cas’ so lightly, it’s barely a touch. 

Cas laughs, a breathless gasp. 

“Ah, I found it,” Dean pulls back to say, then leans in to do it again, and again. 

They stay there as the stars revolve overhead; the wind in their hair, their feet tangled together in the grass as they lay together, laughing. 

  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
